1st Session; and
Congressional Record, 81st
Congress, 1st Session.
implic
in
and
to
, and! shall discuss these impli
cations with you at this time.
broad
ations
volved if the United States extends assistance
JGreece
Turkey
am fully aware of the
1947
During World War II, the United States and the
Soviet Union were allies. After the war, however,
the Soviets were determined to take over the Eastern
European countries that they had occupied. The United
States opposed this, and the two countries were soon
locked into a Cold War. At the same time, communist
parties in many European countries began gaining
power. President Truman sought ways to end this
spread of communism without war.
In 1947 communist rebels in Greece threatened
to overthrow the conservative Greek government. Tru
man asked Congress for $400 million in aid for Greece,
stating a plan that became known as the Truman
Doctrine. Then, in his inaugural address in January
1949, he outlined his Four Point Foreign Policy,
which included his continued support of the European
Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan) and America’s
responsibility to the underdeveloped areas of the world.
As you read the excerpts from Truman’s address to
Congress, in which he outlined the Truman Doctrine,
and the fourth point of his Four Point Foreign Policy,
consider what Truman thought might happen f the
United States failed to provide aid to Greece.
The Truman
Doctrine and the
Four Points
(1947,1949)
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American History, Volume 2
From co;gressional
Record, 80th Congress,
324
1
One of the primary objectives of the foreign
policy of the United States is the creation of condi
tions in which we and other nations will be able
to work out a way of life free from coercion [force
or the threat of force]. This was a fundamental issue
in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory
was won over countries which sought to impose
their will, and way of life, on other nations.
To insure the peaceful development of nations,
free from coercion, the United States has taken a
leading part in establishing the United Nations, The
United Nations is designed to make possible lasting
freedom and independence for all its members. We
shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we
are willing to help free people to maintain their
free institutions and their national integrity against
aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them
totalitarian regimes [systems of government in which
all aspects of people’s lives are rigidly controlled].
This is no more than a frank recognition that totali
tarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct
or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations
of international peace and hence the security of the
United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the
world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced
upon them against their will. The government of
the United States has made frequent protests against
the coercion and intimidation, in violation of the
Yalta agreement, in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.
I must also state that in a number of other countries
there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly
every nation must choose between alternative ways
of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the
majority, and is distinguished by free institutions,
representative government, free elections, guarantees
of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion,
and freedom from political oppression.
325
• The
United Nations
is designed to
make possible
lasting freedom
and
independence
for all its
members.
The Truman Doctrine and the Four Points
326
.
.
.
The second way of life is based upon the will
of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority.
It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled
press and radio, fixed elections and the suppression
of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United
States to support peoples who are resisting attempted
subjugation [takeover or control] by armed minor
I believe that our
ities or by outside pressures.
help should be primarily through economic and
financial aid, which is essential to economic stability
and orderly political processes.
The world is not static [motionless] and the
status quo [present situation] is not sacred. But we
cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation
of the charter of the United Nations by such methods
as coercion, or by such subterfuges [deceptions] as
political infiltration. In helping free and independent
nations to maintain their freedom, the United States
will be giving effect to the principles of the charter
of the United Nations.
It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize
that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation
are of grave importance in a much wider situation.
If Greece should fall under the control of an armed
minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would
be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder
might well spread throughout the entire Middle
East.
It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these
countries, which have struggled so long against over
whelming odds, should lose that victory for which
they sacrificed so much. Collapse of free institutionS
and loss of independence would be disastrous not
only for them but for the world. Discouragement
and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neigh
boring peoples striving to maintain their freedom
and independence.
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured
by misery and want. They spread and grow in the
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American Histoiy, Volume 2
We must embark on a bold new program for
making
the benefits of our scientific advances and
industrial
progress available for the improvement and
growth
of underdeveloped areas.
More than half the people of the world
are
living in conditions approaching misery.
Their food
is inadequate. They are victims of disease.
Their
economic life is primitive and stagnant. Their
poverty
is a handicap and a threat both to them and
prosper
ous areas.
For the first time in history, humanity possesses
the knowledge and the skill to relieve the suffe
ring
of these people.
The United States is pre-eminent among natio
ns
in the development of industrial and scientific
tech
niques. The material resources which we can
afford
to use for the assistance of other people are limit
ed.
But our imponderable resources in technical know
l
edge are constantly growing and are inexhaus
tible.
I believe that we should make available to peac
eloving peoples the benefits of our store of techn
ical
knowledge in order to help them realize their
aspira
tions for a better life. And, in cooperation with
other
nations, we should Foster capital investment
in areas
needing development.
Our aim should be to help the free peoples
of the world, through their own efforts, to prod
uce
1949
evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach
their full
growth when the hope of a people for
a better life
has died. We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to
us for
support in maintaining their freedoms. If
we falter
in our leadership, we may endanger the
peace of
the world—and we shall surely endanger
the welfare
of our own nation. Great responsibilities have
been
placed upon us by the swift movement of
events. I
am confident that the Congress will face
these re
sponsibilities squarely.
327
The free peoples
of the world look
to us for support
in maintaining
their
freedoms.
The Truman Doctrine and the Four Points
more food, more clothing, more materials for hous
ing, and more mechanical power to lighten their
burdens.
We invite other countries to pooi their techno
logical resources in this undertaking. Their contribu
tions will be warmly welcomed. This should be a
cooperative enterprise in which all nations work to
gether through the United Nations and its special
ized agencies wherever practicable. It must be a
worldwide effort for the achievement of peace,
plenty, and freedom.
With the cooperation of business, private capi
tal, agriculture, and labor in this country, this pro
gram can greatly increase the industrial activity in
other nations and can raise substantially their stan
dards of living.
Such new economic developments must be de
vised and controlled to benefit the peoples of the
areas in which they are established, Guarantees to
the investor must be balanced by guarantees in the
interest of the people whose resources and whose
labor go into these developments.
The old imperialism—exploitation for foreign
profit—has no place in our plans. What we envisage
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American Htctosy, Volume 2
President Harry Tru
man addresses a joint
session of Congress to
propose the foreign pol
icy initiative later called
the Truman Doctrine.
328
3. Using Your Historical Imagination. How
do you think Truman visualized the carry
ing out of his two plans? What do you
think he saw as a long-range end result
of the programs he proposed?
President Truman think the United States
could offer to underdeveloped countries?
Which American resources did he say
were limited?
2. What resources of the United States did
thought might happen if the United States
failed to provide aid to Greece?
1. What do you think President Truman
REVIEWING THE READING
is a program of development based on the concepts
of democratic fair-dealing.
All countries, including our own, will greatly
benefit from a constructive program for the better
use of the world’s human and natural resources. Expe
rience shows that our commerce with other countries
expands as they progress industrially and economi
cally.
Greater production is the key to prosperity and
peace. And the key to greater production is a wider
and more vigorous application of modern scientific
and technical knowledge.
Only by helping the least fortunate of its mem
bers to help themselves can the human family achieve
the decent, satisfying life that is the right of all
people.
Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force
to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant
action, not only against their human oppressors, but
also against their ancient enemies—hunger, misery,
and despair.
The Truman Doctrine and the Four Points
329
he social costs of what came to be called McCar
thyism have yet to be computed. By conferring
its prestige on the red [communist] hunt, the state
T
During the late 1940s a new wave of fear swept
across the United States. Several incidents led Ameri
cans to believe that communists had infiltrated the
highest levels of the U.S. government. Public hearings
held by the House Un-American Activities Committee
followed, with informers accusing scores of public
figures of communist activities or connections. Careers
were destroyed virtually overnight.
In 1950 Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy,
in an attempt to further his own career, claimed that
he knew of 205 “card-carrying communists” who
held high positions in the State Department. Although
he never produced the names or provided any form
of proof, McCarthy attacked and ruined the careers
of an untold number of government officials over the
next four years. Finally, McCarthy went too far.
His irrational tactics became obvious to the public,
and the people turned against him. Later that year
the Senate passed a vote of condemnation against
him, and his star fell as quickly as it had risen.
The reputations and careers of McCarthy’s victims,
however, would never be the same, As you read the
following excerpts from journalist Victor Navasky’s
book on McCarthyism, try to determine the meaning
of the term “McCarthyism” as it might be used today.
Victor Navasky
Describes the Costs
of “McCarthyism”
(1950s)
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American Histor,, Volume 2
From Naming Names by
Victor S. Navasky.
334
335
did more than bring misery to the lives of hundreds
of thousands of Communists, former Communists,
fellow travelers [associates of hidden communists],
and unlucky liberals, It weakened American culture
and it weakened itself.
Unlike the Palmer Raids [nationwide raids by
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer against sup
posed subversives] of the early I 920s, which were
violent hit-and-run affairs that had no long-term ef
fect, the vigilante spirit [Joseph] McCarthy repre
sented still lives on in legislation accepted as a part
of the American political way. The morale of the
United States’ newly reliable and devoted civil service
was savagely undermined in the I 950s, and the purge
of the foreign Service contributed to our disastrous
miscalculations in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and
the consequent human wreckage. The congressional
Senator Joseph McCar.
investigations of the 1940s and 1950s fueled the
thy displays photo
anti-Communist hysteria which eventually led to
graphs of alleged
the investment of thousands of billions of dollars
in a nuclear arsenal, with risks that boggle the minds communists at a Senat
of even those who specialize in thinking about the hearing.
Victor Navasky Describes the Costs of”McCartlryicm”
Eyewitnesses and Others: Readings in American Histo,y, Volume 2
.
.
.
unthinkable.” Unable to tolerate a little subversion
(however one defines 10—if that is the price of free
dom, dignity, and experimentation—we lost our
edge, our distinctiveness. McCarthyism decimated
[partially destroyed] its target—the American Com
munist Party, whose membership fell from about
seventy-five thousand in 1957 (probably a high per
centage of these lost were FBI informants)—but the
real casualties of that assault were the walking
wounded of the liberal left and the already impaired
momentum of the New Deal. No wonder a new
generation of radical idealists came up through the
peace and civil-rights movements rather than the
Democratic Party.
The damage was
The damage was compounded by the state’s
compounded by chosen instruments of destruction, the professional
informers—those ex-Communists whom the sociolo
the state’s
gist
Edward Shils described in 1956 as a host of
chosen
frustrated, previously anonymous failures.
instruments of
It is no easier to measure the impact of McCar
destruction, the thyism on culture than on politics,
although emblems
professional
of the terror were ever on display. In the literary
informers
community, for example, generally thought to be
more permissive than the mass media
the distin
guished editor-in-chief of the distinguished publisher
Little, Brown & Co. was forced to resign because
he refused to repudiate [give up] his progressive
politics and he became unemployable. Such liberal
publications as the New York Post and the New Republic
refused to accept ads for the transcript of the trial
of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg [husband and wife
who were tried and convicted in 1951 of passing
atomic secrets to Soviet agents
1 electrocuted in
1953]. Albert Maltz’s short story “The Happiest Man
on Earth,” which had won the 0. Henry Memorial
Short Story Award in 1938 and been republished
seventy-six times in magazines, newspapers, and an
thologies, didn’t get reprinted again from the time
he entered prison in 1950 until 1963. Ring Lardner,
Jr., had to go to England to find a publisher for
336
.
,
.
r
What is the meaning of the term ‘McCar
thyism”
What does Navasky think of the informers
used by the government in its attempt
to rid the country of communists2
Using Your Historical Imagination. Na
vasky says that McCarthyism weakened
American culture and it weakened itself.
What examples does he give to prove
his point2 What does he believe to be
the only possible good to come out of
McCarthyism?
1.
2.
3.
REVIEWING THE READING
his critically acclaimed novel The Ecstasy of Owen
The FBI had a permanent motion-picture
Muir.
crew stationed across the street from the Four Conti
nents Bookstore in New York, which specialized
in literature sympathetic to the Soviet Union’s brand
of Marxism. How to measure a thousand such pollu
tions of the cultural environment
Victor Navasky Describes the Costs
qf “McCarthyism”
337
NAME
CLASS
DATE
On Joining NATO
As the Soviet threat loomed in the aftermath of World War II, the international
community sought ways to ensure world peace and stability. In the United
States, debates raged over whether U.S. membership in the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) would deter Soviet aggression or intensify competition
between the two superpowers.
As you read the passages, try to identify the different consequences that were predicted to
result from U.S. membership in NATO.
Charles E. Bohien, Witness to History,
1929—1969
NATO was simply a necessity. The developing
situation with the Soviet Union demanded the
participation of the United States in the defense of
Western Europe. Any other solution would have
opened the area to Soviet domination.
NATO
was. regarded as a traditional military
alliance of like-minded countries, It was not
regarded as a panacea for the problems besetting
Europe, but only as an elementary precaution
against Communist aggression.
It is difficult now to recapture the mood of
the late 1940s. The Soviet Union was on the move,
not only in carrying out the traditional objectives
of Russian foreign policy but also in utilizing to
the full the existence of Communist parties sub
servient to it the world over. Had the United States
not inaugurated the Marshall Plan,. and [not]
agreed to join NATO, the Communists might easily
have assumed power in most of Western Europe.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Walter Lippmann, politicaljournalist, from a letter
to Thomas Finietter, April 18, 1949
Here there doesn’t seem to be any doubt that the
Senate will eventually ratify the Atlantic Pact,
but on the question of money for arming Europe
there is going to be a great big fight.
If the
budget has to be increased after the Pact, it will
be very hard to answer the feeling that it doesn’t
inaugurate a still more intense phase of the race
of armaments—and that rather knocks into a
cocked hat the argument that the Pact works
for security. I myself am convinced that if the
.
C)
C
ci)
C.)
C
ci)
.
.
Chapter 26 Sutvey Edition
Chapter 16 Modern American History Edition
Russians ever intended to start an overt war, they
will not start it when it is certain that they cannot
win the war unless they defeat the United States.
Therefore, the security of all Europe is greater
than it was once the Pact has been ratified..
Senator Tom Connally (D-Texas), Chairman,
Committee on Foreign Relations, in an address
before the United States Senate, 1949
It is obvious that the United States gains much by
declaring now, in this written pact, the course of
action we would follow even if the treaty did not
exist. Without a treaty, we were drawn into two
world wars to preserve the security of the North
Atlantic community. Can anyone doubt that we
would become involved in a third world conflict
if it should ever come?...
From now on, no one will misread our motives
or underestimate our determination to stand in
defense of our freedom. By letting the world
know exactly where we stand, we erect a funda
mental policy that outlasts the daily fluctuations
of diplomacy, and the twists and turns of psycho
logical warfare which the Soviet Union has chosen
to wage against us. This public preview of our
intentions has a steadying effect upon the course
of human events both at home, where our people
want no more Normandy beachheads, and
abroad, where men must work and live in the
sinister shadow of aggression....
The greatest obstacle that stands in the way
of complete [European] recovery is the pervading
and paralyzing sense of insecurity. The treaty is a
powerful antidote to this poison. It will go far in
dispelling the fear that has plagued Europe since
the war.
Comparing Primary Sources
•
77
NAME
CLASS
DATE
(continued)
an attack against it, only filled me with impa
tience. What in the world did they think we had
been doing in Europe these last four or five years?
Did they suppose we had labored to free Europe
from the clutches of Hitler merely in order to
abandon it to those of Stalin? What did they
suppose the Marshall Plan was all about?...
The danger that the European NATO partners
faced in the political field—the danger, that is,
of a spread of communism to new areas of the
continent by political means—was still greater, I
wrote, than any military danger that confronted
them.
This preoccupation with military affairs was
already widespread, I noted. It was regrettable. It
addressed itself to what was not the main danger.
But it behooved us to bear in mind that the
need for alliances and rearmament in Western
Europe was primarily a subjective one, arising
from the failure of the Western Europeans to
understand correctly their own position. Their best
bet was still the struggle for economic recovery
and internal political stability. Intensive rearma
ment represented an uneconomical and regrettable
diversion of their effort—a diversion that not only
threatened to proceed at the cost of economic
recovery but also encouraged the impression that
war was inevitable.
Senator Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio), in an address
before the United States Senate, 1949
So, Mr. President, I am opposing the treaty.
This whole program in my opinion is not a peace
program: it is a war program.
We are commit
ting ourselves to a policy of war, not a policy of
peace. We are building up armaments. We are
undertaking to arm half the world against the
other half. We are inevitably starting an arma
ment race. The more the pact signatories arm, the
more the Russians are going to arm. It is said they
are armed too much already. Perhaps that is true.
But that makes no difference. The more we arm,
the more they will arm, the more they will devote
their whole attention to the building up of arms.
The general history of armament races in the
world is that they have led to war, not to peace.
.
.
.
George F. Kennan. American diplomat,
Memoirs, 1925—1950
The suggestion, constantly heard from the
European side, that an alliance was needed to
assure the participation of the United States in the
cause of Western Europe’s defense, in the event of
From MEMOIRS: 1925-1950 by George Kennan, Copyright © 1967
by George F, Kennan. By permission of Little, Brown and Co.
QuEsTioNs TO Discuss
C,,
1. According to Connally, how would NATO aid the European economic recovery?
2. Explain why some commentators feared that the U.S. commitment to NATO would
accelerate the arms race.
3. Why did Connally and Lippmann think that U.S. membership in NATO would
deter Soviet aggression in Europe?
4. Why was George Kennan opposed to NATO?
5. Predicting Consequences Both Robert Taft and Tom Connally were
partially correct—there was an arms race, but it did not result in war between the
superpowers or a takeover of Western Europe. Explain the
logic used by each senator to predict what he believed would be the
consequences of NATO.
C.,
I
C,
C
a)
78
•
Comparing Primary Sources
Chapter 26 Survey Edition
Chapter 16 Modern American Histo,y Edition
NAME
CLASS
DATE
President Franklin Roosevelt and wartime media affectionately referred to Soviet
leader Joseph Stalin as “Uncle Joe.” As relations between the United States and
the Soviet Union worsened in the postwar era, so did Americans’ image of Stalin.
In the passage below, Stalin’s daughter Svetlana describes her father in the last
years of his life. Stalin died in 1953.
As you read, compare Svetlana s description with the image most Americans have
of the Soviet leader.
owadays when I read or hear somewhere
that my father used to consider himself
practically a god it amazes me that people who
knew him well can say such a thing.
It’s true my father wasn’t especially demo
cratic, but he never thought of himself as a god.
His life was most solitary of all towards the
end, his trip south in the autumn of 1951 being
the last he ever took anywhere. He never left
Moscow again and stayed at Kuntsevo practically
all the time. Kuntsevo, meanwhile, was re-built
over and over again. In his latter years a little
wooden house was built near the main house, as
the air was fresher there. Often he spent days at a
time in the big room with the fireplace. Since he
didn’t care for luxury, there was nothing luxurious
about the room except the wood paneling and the
valuable rug on the floor.
As for the presents which were sent to him
from all corners of the earth, he had them collected
in one spot and donated them to a museum. It
wasn’t hypocrisy or a pose on his part, as a lot
of people say, but simply the fact that he had no
idea what to do with this avalanche of objects.
He let his salary pile up in packets every
month on his desk. I have no idea whether he had
N
a savings account, but probably not. He never
spent any money—he had no place to spend it
and nothing to spent it on, Everything he needed,
his food, his clothing, his dachas and his servants,
all were paid for by the government. The secret
police had a division that existed specially for this
purpose and it had a book-keeping department of
its own. God only knows how much it cost and
where the money all went. My father certainly
didn’t know.
Sometimes he’d pounce on his commandants
or the generals of his bodyguard, someone like
Viasik, and start cursing: ‘You parasites! You’re
making a fortune here. Don’t think I don’t know
how much money is running through your fingers!’
But the fact was he knew no such thing. His
intuition told him huge sums were being frittered
away, but that was all. From time to time he’d
make an attempt to audit the household accounts,
but nothing ever came of it, of course, because the
figures they gave him were faked. He’d be furi
ous, but he couldn’t find out a thing. All-powerful
as he was, he was impotent in the face of the
frightful system that had grown up around him
like a huge honeycomb, and he was helpless
either to destroy it or bring it under control.
From TWENTY LETTERS TO A FRIEND by Svetlana Alliluyeva.
Translated from the Russian by Priscilla Johnson. (Penguin Books, 1967)
I
QUESTIONS TO
Discuss
1. According to Svetlana, what was Joseph Stalin like? What kind of life did
he live?
2. Distinguishing False from Accurate Images Which image of Stalin as
portrayed by his daughter would most Americans have trouble accepting?
C)
a)
a)
0
a)
0
32
•
Primary Source Activity
Chapter 26 Survey Edition
Chapter 16 Modern American History Edition
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 34
Handout 34 (page 1)
Name
Date
In the Bad Old Summertime
Part A. Read the following account of poiio in the 1950s, and complete the fact-opinion
exercise at the end by marking in front of each statement an F if It is a fact and an 0 if It Is
an opinion.
The first syrnpton was the ache and the stiffness in the lower back and neck. Then
general fatigue. A vaguely upset stomach. A sense of dissociation. Fog closing in. A ringing
in the ears. Dull, persistent aching In the legs. By then the doctor would have been called,
the car backed out of the garage for the trip to the hospital; by then the symptoms would
be vivid: fierce pain, as though the nerves In every part of the body were being probed by
a dentist’s device without Novocain. All this took a day, twenty-four hours.
At the hospital, nurses would command the wheelchair—crowds in the hallway
backing against the walls as the group panic made Its way down the hall to the examining
room, where, amid a turmoil of interns, orderlies, and nurses, the head nurse would step
up and pronounce instantly, with authority, “This boy has polio,” and the others would
draw back, no longer eager to examine the boy, as he was laid out on a cart and wheeled off
to the isolation ward while all who had touched him washed their hands.
Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by a viral agent that invades the body by way of the
gastrointestinal tract, where it multiplies and, on rare occasions, travels via blood and/or
nervous pathways to the central nervous system, where it attacks the motor neurons of the
spinal cord and part of the brain. Motor neurons are destroyed. Muscle groups are
weakened or destroyed. A healthy fifteen-year-old boy of 160 pounds might lose seventy or
eighty pounds in a week.
As long ago as the turn of the century doctors agreed that It was a virus, but not
everyone believed that the doctors knew. One magazine article had said It was related to
diet. Another article said it was related to the color of your eyes. Kids at summer camp got
it, and when a boy at a camp in upstate New York got it in the summer of 1953, a health
officer said no one would be let out of the camp till the polio season was over. Someone said
that public gatherings had been banned altogether in the Yukon. In Montgomery. Alabama,
that summer the whole city broke out; more than eighty-five people caught It. An
emergency was declared, and In Tampa, Florida, a twenty-month-old boy named Gregory
died of it. Five days later, his eight-year-old sister, Sandra, died of it while their mother was
In the delivery room giving birth to a new baby.
The newspapers published statistics every week, As of the Fourth of July, newspapers
said there were 4,680 cases in 1953—more than there had been to that date in 1952,
reckoned to be the worst epidemic year in medical history, in which the final tally had been
57,628 cases. But none of the numbers were reliable; odd illnesses were added to the total,
and mild cases went unreported. Nonetheless, the totals were not the most terrifying thing
about polio. What was terrifying was that, like any plague, you never knew where or when
it might strike. It was more random than roulette—only it did seem to strike children
disproportionately, and so it was called infantile paralysis—and It made parents crazy with
anguish.
The rules were: Don’t play with new friends, stick with your old friends whose germs
you already have; stay away from crowed beaches and poois, especially in August; wash
hands before eating; never use another person’s eating utensils or toothbrush or drink out
of the same Coke bottle or glass; don’t bite another person’s hands or fingers while playing
or (for small children) put another child’s toys in your mouth; don’t pick up anything from
the ground, especially around a beach or pool, or swallow any of the water in the pool; don’t
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
215
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 34
Handout 34 (page 2)
Name
Date
-
have any tooth extractions during the summer; don’t get overtired or strained; if you get a
headache, tell your mother.
Never theless, kids caught it. In the big city hospitals, kids were stacked like cordwood
In the corridors. Carts and wheelchairs congested the aisles. The dominant odor was of
disinfectant. The dominant taste was of alcohol-disinfected thermometers. In the Catholic
hospitals, holy medals and scapulars covered the motionless arms and hands of the
children. On the South Side of Chicago, a mother cried just to see the name above the door
of the place where her child was taken: the Home for Destitute Crippled Children. In some
places, parents were allowed to visit their children only once a week—not because of any
special fact about polio, only because that was how children’s wards were run In 1953. A
child In bed with poiio never forgot the sound made In the corridor by his mother’s
high-heeled shoes.
Injections of gamma globulin were prescribed for those who had not yet caught It.
Certain Insurance against measles, gamma globulin did not prevent catching polio, but It
did seem to minimize the crippling effects. It was in short supply. Injections were given only
to pregnant women and those under the age of thirty who had had a case of polio in the
immediate family—or to prevent the spread of an epidemic. The precious supplies were
placed under the administration of the incorruptible Office of Defense Mobilization.
In Illinois, rumors spread of bootleg gamma globulin. If you were lucky enough to
qualify for a shot, you had to endure the humiliation that went with It: you had to pull
down your pants and say which buttock would take the inch-long needle. To buy off your
pride, the doctor gave you a free lollipop.
When the epidemic broke out in Montgomery, Alabama, the story was that 620
volunteer doctors, nurses, housewives, and military personnel administered sixty-seven
gallons of gamma globulin (worth $625,000), thirty-three thousand inch-long needles, and
thirty-three thousand lollipops. In New York, parents picketed the health department for
twenty-seven hours to get it for their children. In some places people said that parents were
bribing local officials for vials of gamma globulin. At the same time, an article in the June
issue of Scierttflc American reported there was doubt that the stuff was worth a damn.
The New York Times reported that one little girl came down with polio within forty-eight
hours of getting a gamma globulin shot.
In the hospitals. meanwhile, children—shrouded in white gowns and white sheets,
nursed by women in white surgical masks, white dresses starched to the smooth
brittleness of communion wafers—lay in dreadful silence, listening to the faint whispers of
medical conversations on the far side of drawn white curtains, the quiet shush of soft-soled
nurses’ shoes, and the ever-present sound of water in a basin, the ceaseless washing of
hands.
Parents stood at a distance—six feet from the bed—wearing white gowns and white
masks.
One boy’s uncle gave him a black plastic Hopalong Cassidy bank when he was in the
isolation ward. After the customary two-to-three-week stay there, after the fevers passed, he
was moved into the regular children’s ward. On the way, the nurses discarded the
contaminated bank along with Its savings.
Some children were not told what they had (lest it be too dangerous a shock to them),
and so they discovered for themselves. One boy acquired from his visitors the biggest
collection of comic books he had ever had. When he dropped one, he jumped out of bed to
pick it up, crumpled in a heap, and found he couldn’t get up off the floor again.’
4
I
‘Charles L. Mee, Jr.. “The Summer Before Salk,” Esquire, Vol. 100, No. 6 (December 1983). 40, 42.
V COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
216
________
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 34
Handout 34 (page 3)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
Name
Date
-
Gamma globulin injections were an effective preventive measure against polio.
Most cases of polio occurred during the summer months.
Not everyone who contracted polio died or was severely crippled.
It was best to limit parental visits to young polio victims to once a week.
Polio struck children in a disproportionate ratio.
Children had to be kept from the knowledge that they had polio because the
shock was too great for them.
Frequenting crowded places and events increased one’s chances of getting polio.
Susceptibility to polio was linked closely to the color of one’s eyes.
Diet was an important factor in the incidence of polio.
At its height, there were over 50,000 reported cases of polio a year.
Doctors agreed that polio was caused by a virus.
No one could predict with any degree of accuracy the time or place where polio
would strike.
Part 13. Describe a modern threat to children that can create the same feeling of panic among
parents
today
as
polio
did
in
the
1950s.
Cite several examples of the panic caused by this threat.
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
217
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 33
Handout 33 (page 1)
Name
Date
-
Levittown: Remodeling the Perfect Community
Part A. Read the two selections below from “Dream House—Large Economy Size” and “The
House that Levitt Built,” and answer the questions at the end.
Look at an aerial photograph taken
As long as people continue to like peo
from
a lower, copterlike elevation that
to
accommo
prepared
are
ple, Levitt & Sons
one section of curving roads and
shows
Bill
of
window
wide
the
Through
them.
date
culs-de-sac as they were back in 1949 and
Levitt’s farmhouse headquarters are plainly
you can see the facades of the Individual
visible the first rooftops and light poles of a
houses bare In the glare of their individual
booming new Levittown—the first batch of
plots, but It’s still kind of scary.
cut
16,000 houses to go up on 1,100 streets
The two shuttered windows flanking
few
months
a
but
through acreage where
door form identical robotic eyecenter
the
The
spinach.
only
raised
farmers
ago local
and-nose combos, and so what you see are
view from this farmhouse window three years
blank faces set in blank spaces staring
from now will have erupted Into the tenth
blankly across at each other. The empty
largest city in the State of Pennsylvania.
that separate them are utterly un
yards
Starting from scratch, the Levitts will
by the few pathetic-looking sap
protected
open
of
have converted eight square miles
big enough to give shade to an
hardly
lings
populated
densely
a
farm country Into
anthill.
sewer
streets,
Paved
70,000.
of
community
But to drive through the place today
lines, school sites, baseball diamonds,
Is to experience a strange and unexpected
shopping center, parking lots, new rail
transformation. None of the houses looks
road station, factory sidings, churches,
any other house. Nor like any of the
like
clubs,
trunk arteries, newspapers, garden
faces In the aerial photographs. Al
blank
and
dentists
swimming pools, doctors,
single one of them has been
every
most
all
advance,
In
conceived
town hall—all
added on to, extended, built out, remod
previously planned In one of the most co
eled to the max. The roofs have developed
lossal acts ever of mortal creation.
so many dormers on it seems like they’ve
“The most perfectly planned commu
dormers dormers. Fronts have
grown
nity in America,” the Levitts say....
pergolas and porches, roof lines
sprouted
by
the
of
Self-confidence is one
raised, pitched, expanded, cor
been
have
have
customers
that
fact
the
products of
cupolaed. Sides have been car
and
niced,
for
decisions
Levitt
In
faith
registering
been
ported, breezewayed, broken out, re
a quarter of a century, and spectacularly so
covered in redwood, sided in cedar shake,
during the mass migration to Levittown,
disguised In brick and fieldstone, trans
Al
LI., after the war. William, his brother
formed into ranches, splanches, colonials,
built
designed,
fred and father Abraham
and California ramblers. And those onceand
five
In
there
homes
and sold 17,500
pathetic saplings have grown and flour
one-half years. The fourroom Levitt house,
ished into fifty thousand shade trees
appearing on the market In the midst of a
spreading and merging, casting cozy cov
shortage, offered light, air, convenience
erings of shadows and privacy over the
and value—selling for substantially less
rococo renovations
landscap
than $10,000 with closing fees,
A similar Individuating transforma
in.
thrown
ing and kitchen appliances
tion
has taken place In the interiors of
on
right
methods
production
Mass
Levittown homes. In order to Inspect some
the building site (Levitt carpenters never
Interiors, a woman friend and I posed as a
touch a hand saw; paint speckled in two
soon-to-be-married couple looking for our
colors comes out of one spray gun) made
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207
United States History: Book 3
Name
Lesson 33
Handout 33 (page 2)
Date
the Levitt price feasible. But they also de
fined the massive contours of a rather
formidable looking city. Like Topsy, Levit
town, L. I., just grow’d—and grow’d.
Late commuters, lost among identical
rows of houses along identical street
blocks, sometimes reported a sense of
panic like bewildered children suddenly
turned loose in a house of mirrors. “I got
lost there myself looking for street names I
never heard of,” Bill Levitt recalls. When the
lady of the house hung out the wash, the
awesome result was 17,500 pairs of shorts
flapping In 17,500 backyards. The struggle
for identity in these prefabricated circum
stances reduced itself occasionally to a
pretty fine point—like the tone of a doorchime or a novel idea for a wastebasket.
People liked it, anyhow, were grateful
for It, got used to it. grew fond of it. People,
it turned out, liked people.
Levittowners, mostly young ex-G. l.’s
just getting started, acquired a certain
esprit de corps. The crime rate was phe
nomenally low By some mysterious pra
cess (perhaps some form of mass immuni
zation via, mass Infection) Levittowners
seemed to grow progressively healthier.
The Levltts. learned as they built,
When a rash of head lacerations swept over
the community, they solved the epidemic
by removing a swinging window pane from
their original design. They found out, con
trary to some social theorists, that their
customers resisted a chance to acquire
extra-sized lots around their houses at no
extra expense. The man of the family
proved allergic to mowing more lawn and
clipping more hedge.
Levittown lawns must be mowed once
a week nowadays and the wash never flaps
on Sunday. It’s all in the deed.
The Levitts discovered on Long Island
that 2,000 families can make use of a swim
mIng pool, which occupies no more land
than an ordinary tennis court, which at
most can accommodate only four persons at
a time. There will be eight swimming poois
and no tennis courts In Levittown, Pa.
Growing trees enhance the value of property
as the buildings deteriorate. Trees are being
I
-
first home. The only word to describe the
interiors we saw Is Dickensian. Like the
intricately carved-out, compartmented,
cabineted nautical interiors in Copper
field, Dombey, and Drood, the interiors of
Levittown—every square Inch of them—
have been hollowed out, built in, latched,
and sprung; rooms have been divided,
opened out, closed off, and redivided, re
aligned, and redefined. Nothing has re
mained the same, nor do any two interiors
resemble each other or the original.
Just what’s been going on here?
What’s behind this frenzy of remodeling
and redefinition? Gomes, the chimney
sweep of Levittown, my inside source on
the insides of Levittown houses, explained
the phenomenon this way:
“You see, a lot of the original owners,
they paid off their seven-, eight-, or ninethousand-dollar purchase price pretty
quickly—it’s not like they’re rich but it left
them with a lot of Income to dispose of and
instead of trading up to some other place
where it’s gonna be expensive to carry as
anything else today, they’ve been plowing it
Into the place they’ve got. They build out,
they build in. It’s been kind of nonstop.”
This nonstop remodeling craze had
been a peculiarly Levittown phenomenon
from the beginning, and I think there’s
more to It than a mere mortgage payment
calculation going on. I found a clue to the
larger implications of rampant remodeling
when I came across a 1956 House Beauti
ful article in the Levittown archives.
While the article was ostensibly about
the way several Levittown families had re
done their homes inside and out, the title
provides the key to the meaning of the
whole Levittown phenomenon. House
Beautiful called the piece: “How Individu
ality Got a Second Chance.”
The author, a Levittown resident,
rhapsodizes about the remodeling phenom
enon as a story of “people who have an
swered the challenge of conformity by say
ing ‘This is mtne. This house will look like
me, this house will sing of my spirit.’”...
On a more down-to-earth level, he
quotes one woman remodeler who explains
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208
I
4
I
I
I
Name
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 33
Handout 33 (page 3)
Date
-
planted at the rate of one every twenty-eight
feet—two and one-half trees per home.
In the struggle against monotony the
same floor plan has been enclosed by four
different types of exteriors, painted in
seven varieties of color—so that your shape
of Levittown house occurs In the same
color only once every twenty-eight times.
Streets are curved gently for further es
thetic effect, and to slow down auto traffic.
Most ambitious of all is the mass
builders’ solution for what Lewis Mumford
has called the need for “a return to the
human scale”—a scale small enough to be
recognizable, intimate enough to be neigh
borly, cohesive enough to function.
Levittown, Pa., will be subdivided Into
sixteen separate “neighborhoods,” each
bearing distinctive place names like Stonybrook, Lakeside, Birch Valley. (Every street
in Stonybrook, for example, begins with
“S”—a big help to the postman and late
celebrants.) “Birch Valley lies In a little
valley where hundreds of birch trees grow,”
a publicity release Idyllizes.
Sociologically speaking, the 300 to
600 famIlies In each of these distinguish
able communities will be encouraged to
think of themselves as Lakesiders rather
than Levittowners, to create their own gar
den clubs, Little League baseball teams,
veterans’ organizations, and neighbor
hood Idiosyncrasies. Thus, It is hoped,
tender shoots of friendship, kindness and
goodwill can push through the chaos and
blight of our machine society.
The most pressing requirement of the
Ideally planned town, Mumford believes, is
diversity. “Levittown offers a very narrow
range of house type to a narrow Income
range. It is a one-class community on a
great scale—too congested for effective va
riety and too spread out for social relation
ships necessary among high school chil
dren, old folks and families who can’t afford
outside help. Mechanically, it Is admirably
done. Socially, the design is backward.”
the phenomenon by saying, “Maybe be
cause they all started out looking so much
the same
that’s why they’re trying so
hard to be different.”
There is a deceptively simple truth In
that statement about the nature of individ
ualism. At the heart of individualist Ideol
ogy is not the idea that all people start out
Irrevocably different, People are not born
“originals.” In fact it’s the opposite: aU men
are created equally unformed, equally un
original with an equal capacity to grow and
remodel themselves into different and orig
inal individuals,
And so we can look at the Levittown
experience as an exact metaphor for the
theory of American Individualism. Those
identical blank-faced Cape Cod pods all
created equal, ready to be Inhabited, invig
orated,
Individuated by democratic,
undictated-to expressions of free will, We
can look at Levittown as an almost perfect
laboratory demonstration of the inexorable
workings of the American individualist im
pulse.
How individuality got a second
chance, America has always been about
starting over with a clean slate. That blank
green plain that challenged the Dutch sail
or’s capacity for wonder was a tabula rasa
for those extricated from the carved and
pitted plains of Europe. But after two wars
and a depression had shaken the confi
dence of the country In its Innocence,
American Individuality needed a second
chance, a belief that it was possible to start
over in innocence with the slate wiped
clean once again, a chance for Americans
to seek out and rediscover the validity of
the original individualist Impulse. Bill Lev
itt’s Levittown and the blank-slate burbs
he gave birth to provided a unique oppor
tunity for the postwar generation to reen
act the discovery of America.
From Penn Kimball, “Dream Town—Large Economy
Ron Rosenbaum, “The House that Levitt Built,”
Esquire Vol. 100, No. 6 (December 1983): 388.
.
Size” inNew York Times Magazine(December 14, 1952)
reprinted In William L. O’Neill, American Society Since
1945 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), 37—42.
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
209
.
.
t
Name
(Jnited States History: Book 3
Lesson 33
Handout 33 (page 4)
C
Date
1. List examples of planning displayed in a Levittown.
2. Why did Levitt plan everything the same?
3. Cite examples of conformity In Levittown.
4. How does Levitt attempt to show variety? In your opinion, does It succeed? Explain
your position.
5. Levittown in the 1980s has taken on a new look. How has conformity been replaced?
6. Why has conformity been replaced in Levittown?
7. Explain which Levittown—old or new—better expresses the American spirit.
Part B.
Neighborhood Field Survey: Conformity
vs.
Individuality
For this part of the lesson, take a survey of your home or school neighborhood to assess its
degree of conformity.
1. Examine a row of houses on a nearby street.
Block:
Name of street:
How many houses are there?__________
How many architectural styles are represented?
What is the predominant color?
Number of homes
What is the second most common color?
Number of homes
How many yards have distinctive landscaping?
© COPYRIGHT. The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
210
Describe them.
Name
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 33
Handout 33 (page 5)
Date
-
2. How many churches are In your neighborhood?
Number with traditional architecture?
—
Number with modem architecture?
—
3. How many restaurants in your neighborhood?
List the franchise restaurants.
List
the
restaurants.
one-of-a-kind
4. Categorize the stores In your neighborhood by listing those that are chain stores and
those that are individually owned.
Individually owned
Chain
5. Examine the cars In a nearby parking lot.
Total number of cars
Most popular make of car
Number of that make
Second most popular make
Number of that make
Most unusual car
Describe:
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211
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 30
Handout 30 (page 1)
Name
Date
Korea: War Without Victors
The reading below Is Cleveland News war correspondent Howard Beaufait’s report from
Korea entitled “Yanks Eager to Go on Offense, End War Quickly.” Consider It as well as your
textbook’s account of the Korean Conflict in answering the questions at the end.
WITH U.S. SEVENTH DIVISION, KOREA—I often wondered what war was like. Now I
know. For a week I lived with the horror of a big battle, the smell of blood on raw earth, the
pounding noise and danger.
War as I see it in Korea, the broken little finger of Asia. is dying and suffering on the
mountains and slopes of undreamed of places.
Places like Old Baldy, a mammoth granite skeleton rising out of a dead valley. Or Pork
Chop, the seared and misshapen hill, or its crippled companion, T-E3one, or one of the teeth
of Alligator Jaws, which reaches out toward the Imjtn River.
Outlandish places you only find on a soiled military map because the 01’s felt they had
to give them names before they could defend them. These names are not a part of the
civilized geography of the world.
They are lonely places for an Infantryman to die, the 01 whose heart is always so close
to home.
The 01, caught again In the swinging door of history, fights a war In Korea he doesn’t
believe in. He dies and suffers wounds In places he despises, for a cause he doesn’t
understand. He fights alongside soldiers who can’t understand him, the Colombians, the
Ethiopians, the Porto Ricans, the grinning Katusas (Korean augmentation troops, U.S.
Army)—agalnst Red Chinese who scream like hyenas whether they are winning or losing.
How can a GI understand a war like this? A dirty hootchie war? Living in a cave or a
bunker like a mole, blinking at the sunlight? A war fought mostly at night when he can’t
see who he is fighting?
The only kind of a war the 01 understands is to step up to the guy who Is challenging
him, lick him and go home. But in Korea he feels his hands are tied behind his back. He
gets hit and defends himself as best he can.
But defense is a sissy game, He wants to go out and get the enemy, not sit back and
wait to be shoved off a mountain, and then have to fight to get it back again.
The infantryman Is the real hero of any war. He fights the kind of a war he is told to
fight. And he dies in Korea completely cut off from everything that makes sense, His last
picture of the world is hazy with smoke, flame and flying mortar fragments and awful noise
mixed up with the piercing yells of the Chinese Commies.
He falls in yellow mud, convinced it is all a bad dream and he will suddenly wake up
In Cleveland where all the crazy pieces of the puzzle dissolve into a comforting pattern
called home.
War comes Into sorrowful focus at the battalion aid station, first stop for the wounded
and the dead when the battle for them is over, and the medics and chaplains get busy.
I was there on a cold grey morning when the fight had been blazing 48 hours. Medics
who had been without rest for two days were methodically cutting clothing from the
wounded.
I saw several truck loads of replacements arrive to relieve weary troops on the line. The
new arrivals sat on the ground, resting their backs against the sandbags of the hootchie
bunkers, clutching rifles between their legs. They silently watched the trucks with the big
Red Cross unload their bloody burdens into [the] tender hands of the medics.
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
187
Name
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 30
Handout 30 (page 2)
Date
The first glimpse of war was frightening and sickening. They turned away from their
own wounded and looked with quiet falslcination upon the rows of Chinese dead.
So that was the enemy. Up to now he had only been a word in a military textbook, a
name in a practice maneuver. Red China’s Joe didn’t really look like much. His equipment,
piled nearby, wasn’t so hot—some Russian, some Japanese. His clothing was of poor
quality and dirty. Funny red underwear with dozens of pockets. What does he need pockets
there for? Wearing tennis shoes that looked as if some Cl had thrown them away.
Most Impressive thing about Joe were his legs. bulging calf muscles, his short
powerful arms and shoulders, strong from carrying enormous loads impossible distances,
up and down impossible mountains.
The boys on the way up to the line for the first time looked with scorn upon the enemy
rations strapped around his waist. A small roll of rice, linked together like sausage, and a
soybean cake. But it’s enough to keep the squat little guy with the sturdy legs going for
eight days—while the CI is having his three hot, nourishing meals a day.
The replacement wonders What’s Red Joe got that we haven’t got. Nothing, but
unlimited numbers, and ferocity. The uninitiated recruits took what comfort they could
from the dead Chinese. But there was a cold lump in the pit of their stomachs.
I crawled Into a warm sleeping bag that night in a tent at division headquarters. It was
bitter cold, but it was raining. The artillery could be heard booming its rhythmic assault
above the sound of the cold rain beating on the canvas.
I thought about the boys up on the MLR (main line of resistance,) at Baldy, Pork Chop,
T-Bone. Their bunkers and trenches were collapsed by the shelling. Some of the Colombian
dead had not yet been removed from Baldy.
Up there the rain had turned to wet snow. Cl’s huddled in shell holes and caves half
filled with water.
Some of them were saying their prayers. Some were wondering what their girls were
doing back home, of lithe Indians really do have a chance to win the pennant this year.
1
That’s what one little acre of the war Is like.
1. What is meant by each of these phrases from the article:
a. “the broken little finger of Asia”:
b. “Red China’s Joe”:
2. Why were Americans fighting along with Colombians, Ethiopians, and Porto Ricans?
3. Why had the Chinese entered the war?
4. Why weren’t Americans allowed to go on the offensive?
‘Howard Beaufait, “Yanks Eager to Go on Offense, End War Quickly,” Cleveland News, 6 April 1953, 1.
© COPYRIGHT. The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not for sale.
188
United States History: Book 3
Lesson 30
Handout 30 (page 3)
Name
Date
-
5. Why did the soldiers feel just the sort of frustration that got General MacArthur fired?
6. Is the Korean War presented in histories today as a success or failure? Explain your
answer.
7. In your opinion, did the 33,000 American men who were killed in battle die in vain?
Explain your reasoning.
8. a. How would you justify the war to a mother whose son was killed in the war?
b. How would Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt—both firm believers in collec
tive security—have viewed the outcome of the war?
9. Has history vindicated President Truman’s decision to fire General MacArthur?
Explain your answer.
10. What other limited wars has the world witnessed since the end of the Korean Conflict?
Why are we likely to have more frustrating wars of this kind in the future?
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189
NAME
CLASS
PRIMARY SOURCE ACTIVITY
I
DATE
‘continued)
The Rise of Joseph McCarthy
C
H
A
p
T
E
R
26
In the 1950s, Senator Charles E. Potter (R-MI) was a member of the Senate
Government Operations Committee. The excerpt below is from Days of Shame,
Potter’s behind-the-scenes account of the Army-McCarthy hearings.
As you read, think about conditions in society that made it possible for someone like
Joseph McCarthy to gain power.
believe that a great many factors were involved
in the rise to power of Joe McCarthy. For one
thing, the atmosphere of the post-World War II
years seemed made to order for his particular
tactics. He preyed on the fears of a war-weary
nation. My generation, the World War II genera
tion, had reached maturity during the depression
years. Our earliest teenage memories were those
of hardship in the home and a dispirited feeling
of hopelessness in our parents. Then the war had
brought prosperity and many millions of us in
the Armed Services found our first security as
a premium in return for some of the physical
dangers we faced.
In uniform we ate well, which had not always
been true in the past; we were well clothed, warm
and well sheltered except in actual combat; many
of us went to a dentist for the first time in our
lives because we never had been able to afford it;
we traveled all around the earth to places that
had been tiny spots in our geography books and
we met strange people and watched new customs.
Many died, but those of us who lived could,
in honesty, look back on those years and repeat
the corny phrase of the time: “We never had it so
good.” But by 1946, after the war years of priva
tion, or what we liked to think of as privation, we
came back looking for a better life for ourselves
and our parents. The emotional drive was ending.
We had matured from boyhood to manhood too
quickly. And when we got home we found things
not at all the way we expected them to be.
All of a sudden our Russian allies had become
the new enemy, and the Germans and Japanese
were being called our good friends. This strange
and rapid switch in national thinking took place
while we were still learning more and more details
of what the Germans had done to the Jews and
what the Japanese had done to our own men in
I
90
•
Chapter 26 Primary Source Activity
their prison camps. Now we were told we must
hate the Russians because they were Communists
although I could not remember any such com
plaint about them when they blasted their way
out of Stalingrad and started to roll westward
over the German armies.
The tendencies toward war still rumbled
in Eastern Europe. In 1947, Greece and Turkey
were threatened and it was then that the President
announced the Truman Doctrine, a sweeping
commitment to defend freedom in the Middle
East. Later on, President Eisenhower would
slap down aggression in the Middle East, but
always the trumpet sounded against Communism,
ignoring Arab Nationalism.
“The stage was set for an opportunist
who would be willing and able to
take full advantage of the national
confusion and frustration and send
it ballooning into hysteria.
Joseph Stalin moved against Berlin in 1948,
and it was then that President Truman started
the famous airlift of supplies into the city which
saved our interests there and sent Stalin’s hopes
scuttling back toward Moscow.
It was a period of extreme unrest in this
country and it was not long before politicians,
writers, and self-appointed advisers with all
possible motives learned that denouncing
Communism was a profitable occupation.
Many, of course, were sincere, but few gave
their message with restraint and, as always,
the press poured out the big, black headlines.
© Prentice-Hall, Inc.
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(continued)
Many people had joined groups during the
depression years which were later to be put on
various lists as Communist fronts. They had
joined in despair, and sometimes in the hope that
somehow they might make a better world for
themselves. There was no reason to believe that
every person who joined these groups was an
advocate of the violent overthrow of the United
States Government. However, many of them were
soon to learn that they might be so labeled by the
loudest voices of demagoguery.
The American Legion and other veterans’
groups added their belligerent shouts to the
confusion, and, all over the country, many ethnic
groups, through their own publications and
communications, spread the new theory that
Communism was one hundred percent wrong
and that it was safe to call anyone with whom
you disagreed a Communist.
Then came the Korean war and with it the
license to denounce Communism more loudly
than ever and with less concern as to who might
be the target.
The stage was set for an opportunist who
would be willing and able to take full advantage
of the national confusion and frustration and sent
it ballooning into hysteria.
Another important factor in the creation of
the disgraceful situation which absorbed our
country in 1954 was the birth and distortion and
growth of investigative committees in Congress.
Governmental investigating committees for leg
islative purposes were not new and even predate
the founding of our country. Their proper pur
poses are to investigate the functioning of existing
laws and considerations for either amending or
drafting new legislation. However, it was never
intended that these legislative bodies should con
duct quasi trials with power of punishment.
Into this unfortunate situation came a man
who had a tremendous need to be the center of
attraction, a man who must have hated himself
violently for he found it so easy to drench others
with hatred. He was a man of strong ambition but
his ambitions had no substance, his dreams
reached no further than tomorrow’s headlines.
In February 1950, he was invited to speak
to the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club
at Wheeling, West Virginia, and it was there that
he either did or did not wave a piece of paper—
reports were contradictory—and say that it
contained the names of 205 Communists in the
State Department.
At that moment, a poison pellet was dropped
into our society and the fumes would never
entirely blow away.
From Days of Shame. Copyright © 1965 by Charles Potter.
Reprinted by permission of the Putnam Berkeley Group.
ACTIVITY
By the end of 1953, 50 percent of those sampled in a Gallup poii held a positive
opinion of Joseph Mc.arthy, with 29 percent having an unfavorable opinion.
Conduct your own “survey” to determine how people today view Joseph
McCarthy. Interview older relatives and neighbors as well as classmates and
teachers. Report your findings to the class.
© Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Chapter 26 Primary Source Activity
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Lesson 31
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Handout 31 (page 1)
Loyalty vs. Liberty: The McCarthy Era
Part A. Read the following excerpt from writer Millard Lampell’s “1 Was Blacklisted” In
preparation for a class activity on causes and effects of McCarthyism.
By 1950, I had been a professional writer for eight years, including the time spent as
a sergeant in the Air Force that produced my first book, “The Long Way Home.” I had
published poems, songs and short stories, written a novel and adapted it as a motion
picture, authored a respectable number of films, radio plays and television dramas,
collected various awards, and seen my Lincoln cantata, “The Lonesome Train,” premiered
on a major network, issued as a record album, and produced in nine foreign countries.
Then, quietly, mysteriously and almost overnight, the job offers stopped coming.
‘
Free-lance writing is a fiercely competitive arena, and when work bypasses you and
goes to others, the logical conclusion Is that they have more talent. At the same time,
however, there was another disturbing note. I began to have increasing difficulty In getting
telephone calls through to producers I had known for years.
It was about three months before my agent called me In, locked her door, and
announced in a tragic whisper, “You’re on the list.”
It seemed that there was a list of writers, actors, directors, set designers, and even
trapeze artists, choreographers and clowns who were suspected of Communist leanings
and marked by all the ifim studios, networks and advertising agencies as unemployable.
No, my agent had never actually laid eyes on this list. She had not even been officially
informed that I was a pariah. It was all hints, innuendos and enigmatic murmurs. “I
understand he’s in a little trouble.”
What made It all so cryptic was the lack of accusations or charges. Fearing legal suits,
the film companies and networks flatly denied that any blacklist existed. There was no way
of getting proof that I was actually on a list, no way to learn the damning details. My income
simply dropped from a comfortable five figures to $2,000 a year.
Through the next several years, bit by bit, the shadowy workings of the blacklist came
Into sharp focus. There were, to begin with, numerous lists. Their common chief origin
was the Attorney General’s unofficial and highly arbitrary index of “subversive organiza
tions,” and the published reports of the sessions of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities—testimony from self-styled experts on Communism, a steamy mixture of fact,
fancy and hearsay. Among those who had been named as subversives before the committee
were the 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe and Shirley Temple, characterized
in 1938 as an unwitting Communist dupe. But also named at one session or another were
hundreds of working professionals in the communications and entertainment fields. Then
somebody got the profitable idea of publishing “Red Channels,” a handy, paperback
compendium of the names of the suspected. Every time a name listed In this pamphlet
appeared among the credits of a film or a broadcast, it was greeted with complaints written
under the letterheads of various obscure patriotic organizations. It took only a handful of
these letters to stir panic in the executive corridors.
Perhaps one has to begin by calling up the atmosphere of those days. the confusing,
stalemate fighting In Korea, the flare-up of belligerent patriotism, the growing government
Impatience with any dissent from official policy. It was a time of security checks, loyalty
oaths, FBI investigations, tapped phones, secret dossiers, spy scandals, library book
burnings, and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin waving a briefcase at the television
.
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United States History: Book 3
Name
Lesson 3 1
Handout 31 (page 2)
Dale
cameras and rasping that it contained the names of
a battalion of Reds in the State
Department. A time of suspicion, anonymous accusation,
and nameless anxiety. Friends I
had known for years passed me by on the street with no
sign of recognition but a furtive
nod....
Then, in the spring of 1952, a wispy, harassed man in an ill-fitti
ng suit appeared at my
door, flipped through a bulging folder, and handed me
a subpoena from the Senate
Committee on Internal Security. It was in Washington.
at a closed session of the committee,
that for the first time I got some clues to the nature of
the charges against me.
In 1940, 1 had come up from West Virginia and, with Pete
Seeger. Woody Guthrle and
Lee Hays, formed a folk-singing group called The Alman
acs. Now, when every third college
student seems to be toting a guitar. when used car lots adverti
se “Hootenanny Sale,” and
willowy girls drive around in Alfa-Romeos bought with
the royalties from their albums of
chain-gang blues and piney woods laments, it seems unbeli
evable that when I first came to
New York The Almanacs were, to my knowledge, the only
folk-singing group north of the
Cumberland Gap.
Leadbelly was around, newly arrived and living in obscur
ity. Josh White and Burl Ives
were managing to scrape out a meager living. There wasn’t
exactly a clamor for folk-singers.
and we were grateful for any paid bookings we could
get. Mostly we found ourselves
performing at union meetings and left-wing benefit
s for Spanish refugees, striking
Kentucky coal miners, and starving Alabama sharecropper
s,
We were all children of the Depression, who had seen bone-a
ching poverty, bummed
freights across country, shared gunny-sack blankets with
the dispossessed and the
disinherited. We had learned our songs from gaunt, unemp
loyed Carolina cotton weavers
and evicted Dust Bowl drifters, Such as they were, our politic
s were a crude, hand-me-down
cross between Eugene Debs and the old Wobbiles. A primiti
ve, folk version of what
Franklin D. Roosevelt was saying In his fireside chats. We
were against hunger, war and
sillcosis, against bankers, landlords, politicians and Dixie deputy
sheriffs. We were for the
working stiff, the underdog, and the outcast, and those were
the passions we poured into
our songs. We were all raw off the road, and to New York’s left-wi
ng Intellectuals we must
have seemed the authentic voice of the working class. Singin
g at their benefits kept us in
soup and guitar-string money.
Then came the army, and the week after I was discharged I appear
ed on Town Hall of
the Air teamed with Bill Mauldin, debating two generals on
the subject, “What The 01
Wants.” It was a natural set-up for audience sympathy, enliste
d men against the brass. I got
almost two thousand fan letters, and overnight found myself
a kind of celebrity, In demand
as a public speaker. I spoke anywhere that the subject was
peace or prejudice, and never
thought to give a damn who the sponsoring organization was,
Nobody ever tried to tell me
what to say.
Years later, before the Senate Committee, I found that period
haphazardly reported
and presented as evidence that I had taken part in a subver
sive plot to bring riot and ruin
to my native land. I was ordered to account for my life and to give
the names of everyone I
could ever remember having seen at those bygone benefits. Consid
ering privacy of belief to
be a constitutional right of all Americans, I refused.
Even though I appeared at a closed session of the committee, it
didn’t take very long
for the news to get around. The blacklist slammed doors comple
tely shut.
In those first years, the two major sources of work were other writers
suffering from
a creative block and desperate producers with deadline and budget
trouble, I spent four
months filling the assignments of a well-known writer who
found himself unable to face his
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission.
Not for sale.
194
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United States History: Book
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Lesson 31
Date
Handout 31 (page 3)
typewriter. It was a lucky and profitable arrangement that ended when he appeared one
midnight and haggardly told me that his analyst had advised him that signing his name to
my work was giving him an even deeper psychological problem. “He says Tm losing my
identity.”
By taking everything that came our way, a few dozen of us on the East Coast and in
Hollywood were working sporadically and managing to survive. For every blacklisted writer
who anonymously kept at his trade, ten fell by the wayside. If you could turn out a feature
film in a couple of weeks or an hour television play in five days for a twenty-fifth of your
former price, you had a chance.
It was a lot tougher for the directors and the actors. They couldn’t work without being
present in person. One brilliant clown who has since become the toast of Broadway and
Time magazine used to go around roaring, “I’m Z., the man of a thousand faces, all of them
blacklisted!”.
By the mid 1950’s, the situation had eased a bit. A sympathetic fledgling producer.
employing the talents of blacklisted writers, came up with two extremely successful
network children’s adventure series, And the word was getting around that such-and-such
a Hollywood box-office smash, though signed by Y, was actually written by X. There even
began to grow a certaIn mystique about the spectacular feats of the twilight writers, it was
not uncommon for me to get calls from acquaintances who would chortle, “I just saw your
play on television. Okay, okay, you can’t say anything. But you can’t kid me, I’d recognize
your style anywhere.” Sometimes It actually was my work, sold under another name.
Sometimes it was not, my protests were of little avail, and I wasn’t sure whether to feel
amused or embarrassed.
The producer T, tells me that the head of a major Hollywood studio threw the fourth
stinks, Do me a favor, stop wasting money, go find
draft of a script back at him, yelling,
writer.”
a
blacklisted
yourself
It was a scramble, and I found myself writing all sorts of things I’d never tried before.
industrial training films, travel shorts, doctoring Broadway plays. I wouldn’t choose to go
through it again, but in many ways it sharpened my skills and expanded my sense of
Invention.
In the end, I was writing under four different pseudonyms. Including a Swedish name
I used for sensitive art-house films. And there were two or three cleared writers willing to
sign my work when the network or agency demanded a name with experience and a list of
reputable credits.
I had read Kafka, but nothing prepared me for the emotions of living in the strange
world of the nameless, A script of mine won a major award, and I remember the queer
feeling of being a nonperson when another writer went up to claim it. At that, I think It was
even worse for him. He tried to give me the trophy, miserably telling me that ht felt like a
fraud. We ended up tossing It in a trash can, and then went out and got drunk together.
Of course, there was a way to avoid all the difficulties. One could always appear before
the committee and purge oneself. There were two lawyers who specialized in arranging this,
one in New York and one in Hollywood. The established fee was $5,000. for which one got
expert advice in composing a statement of mea cuLpa, avowing that, being an artist, one
the dupe of diabolical forces. One
was naive about the devious ways of politics and had been
was also required to offer the names of former friends and acquaintances who were the real
subversives. If one knew no such names, the lawyer would obligingly supply some, in one
case arguing away the qualms of a famous choreographer who was anxious to clear himself
b
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9
UtUted States I fistory: Book 3
Lesson 31
Handout 31 (page 4)
Name
Date
but reluctant to become an informer with the reassuring thought, “Hell, they’ve all been
named already, so you’re not really doing them any harm. They can’t be killed twice.”.
In 1960, what seemed to be a wide crack appeared in the wall of the blacklist. I was
offered the job of writing a film In London, working with a renowned Hollywood director
who had fled a committee subpoena. It was a suspense film of, I think, considerable artistic
quality, and despite the fact that our names were on it, American distribution rights were
purchased by a major Hollywood company. When the first publicity came out, a few weeks
before it was to open on Broadway, a Long Island post of the American Legion threatened
to picket the theater. The film corporation hastily abandoned plans for the premiere. But
they had half a million dollars at stake, and their lawyers met wIth Legion representatives
to work out a deal to protect their investment. The film would have no official opening. A few
months would be allowed to pass, to let things cool off. Then the picture would be quietly
sneaked into the neighborhood theaters as part of a double bill with a Cary Grant comedy.
*
And so it went, Truce came to Korea, and Mccarthy, after being outmaneuvered at one
of his own hearings by Department of the Army lawyer Joseph Welch. was squashed by his
colleagues in the Senate, and eventually died. Dalton Trumbo won an Oscar under the
name of Robert Rich, and emerged from underground to write “Exodus” In his own name
for Otto Preminger. John Henry Faulk sued several of the self-appointed patriots who had
put pressure on the networks,’ and won a whopping award for character damage. The
blacklist began to crumble and producers assured me that in their hearts they had always
opposed It. Along Madison Avenue and Sunset Boulevard, people wondered exactly how It
had ever happened in the first place.
.
.
‘Millard Lampell, “I Was Blacklisted,” The New York Times (21 August 1966): Section 2, page 13.
© COPYRIGHT, The Center for Learning. Used with permission. Not For sale,
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United States History: Book 3
Lesson 31
Handout 31 (page 5)
Name
Date..
Part B. The following activity involves recognizing cause-effect relationships In the McCar
thy era. Where the cause is given, your task Is to supply the effect stemming from that cause.
Where the effect Is given, you need to supply the cause for that result.
Causes
1.
Effects
Actors and writers leaned toward Commu
nist and Socialist principles
2. ChIna became Communist in 1949
3. Accusations of HUAC about persons
with Communist leanings and ques
tionable loyalty
4.
-
—
Enhanced McCarthy’s power and prestige
In early 1950s
War
5. Rumors of an artist’s placement on
the blacklist
AutomatIc damage to reputation
6.
b
7. Cooperation with HUAC
PublicatIon of “Red Channels”
8.
9. Need for quality writers
10.
Blacklist began losing its effect
11.
Lack of creativity In movies
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197